


step on the glass (staple your tongue)

by ravenreyamidala



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Ficlet, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Post Civil War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 05:47:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17677574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenreyamidala/pseuds/ravenreyamidala
Summary: After Siberia, Tony spirals.





	step on the glass (staple your tongue)

Tony doesn’t know how he had gotten here, in the lab, in the lab, in the lab, in the---

Nothing is working right, his suit is broken, the holograms keep flickering--

No, those are his hands, shaking. 

He watches his hands, detached. Even during the worst of the palladium poisoning, even in that fucking cave, he was still able to work, to be useful. 

The robots are still in the team compound. He’ll have to arrange transportation for them, to get them back to him, to get them back home to  Avengers’  Stark Tower. 

It’s too noisy, but there isn’t enough sound. The walls are closing in on him, but he’s too small. 

He’s slowly going out of his mind. A fucking car battery in his chest, a wormhole to outer-fucking-space, and this is what renders him obsolete, exposes every fucking flaw in his code. 

He doesn’t know how to be bad at fixing. He doesn’t know how to fix this. His tremors, his suit, his fucking brain, Ste--

His (shaking) hands have swept everything off the workbench before he’s even aware of the rage burning incandescent in his brain, the buzzing in his ears, he can’t hear anything else and his gauntleted hands are smashing his chair over the table, glass shattering, chair falling apart, glorious noise abounding. 

Is this what Bruce is afraid of, he wonders absently, not of the destruction, but of the joy? 

Because Tony is smiling as he kicks over what remains of the table. Teeth bared, he punches a wall, feeling it give way, beating it, superior in every way. 

Because it’s a wall. He’s trying to compete with a wall. Maybe not right now, because he can’t fix things, but he’s better than a wall. Probably. 

He looking at the shield now, paint dingy and chipped, overall grimy and dirty and awful-looking, and when he picks it up he starts walking without thinking to the bench, he has to clean it, fix it, Cap’s going to need it--

Except Cap doesn’t need the shield. Cap doesn’t need him. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Billie Eilish's "bury a friend."


End file.
